Rooing the Day
Feb. 21st, 2019 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silversandbeaThis morning there was a chance mention on twitter about the history of textiles with science and engineering:
And my mind was blown, so I turned to google. Part of this is that I'd imagined that plucking the way that you'd pluck, like, a chicken, or stray eyebrow hairs and was wondering how the hell that would even work. Turns out they mean pluck the way that you might remove chunks of fur from a husky (or your carpet) in the summer - sheep used to shed. Then I ran into the term rooing when describing the plucking - and then it suddenly made a lot more sense. Rooing is still done today, with certain types of sheep. You can just pull the wool right off, like so:
It's just that I'd never thought that this was a more primitive aspect of wool acquisition, because it seems like such a specific thing to breed for, and I have no idea how you'd even select for that. Figuring out a sharp thing to cut off the wool seems like it would be so much easier, and maybe after a few thousand years, someone would be like 'maybe we can breed the sheep so we can just pull the wool off all at once, you know,for funsies'. Apparently not really! Most of the sources I've found so far (and I mean, this is just me googling during work, so there's definitely more out there and if anyone wants to point me in the right direction I am not going to object) don't really differentiate between the dog-shedding plucking coat and the pull the entire thing off at once coat, much less trying to figure out when the second type might have appeared. I'm not even sure if there is a second type, really.
Eventually I also found this link, which was a delight to listen to - No Wool, No Vikings - on the importance of wool and sheep in Viking culture, and the description of rooing. I highly recommend listening to the audio, if you're at all interested.
Anyway, this is all to say that I'm reading Women's Work: The first 20,000 years next. I'll let you know how it goes.
Elsewhere, the Rivers of London discussion is still happening on FanFare. We're on Broken Homes now.
Another interesting paper/talk would be the history of wool through the lens of materials science and engineering. (How do you shear a sheep before metallurgy made shears possible? - you don't. You pluck the damn thing.)
— Auntie Julie (@StrangeAttract5) February 21, 2019
And my mind was blown, so I turned to google. Part of this is that I'd imagined that plucking the way that you'd pluck, like, a chicken, or stray eyebrow hairs and was wondering how the hell that would even work. Turns out they mean pluck the way that you might remove chunks of fur from a husky (or your carpet) in the summer - sheep used to shed. Then I ran into the term rooing when describing the plucking - and then it suddenly made a lot more sense. Rooing is still done today, with certain types of sheep. You can just pull the wool right off, like so:
It's just that I'd never thought that this was a more primitive aspect of wool acquisition, because it seems like such a specific thing to breed for, and I have no idea how you'd even select for that. Figuring out a sharp thing to cut off the wool seems like it would be so much easier, and maybe after a few thousand years, someone would be like 'maybe we can breed the sheep so we can just pull the wool off all at once, you know,for funsies'. Apparently not really! Most of the sources I've found so far (and I mean, this is just me googling during work, so there's definitely more out there and if anyone wants to point me in the right direction I am not going to object) don't really differentiate between the dog-shedding plucking coat and the pull the entire thing off at once coat, much less trying to figure out when the second type might have appeared. I'm not even sure if there is a second type, really.
Eventually I also found this link, which was a delight to listen to - No Wool, No Vikings - on the importance of wool and sheep in Viking culture, and the description of rooing. I highly recommend listening to the audio, if you're at all interested.
Anyway, this is all to say that I'm reading Women's Work: The first 20,000 years next. I'll let you know how it goes.
Elsewhere, the Rivers of London discussion is still happening on FanFare. We're on Broken Homes now.
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Date: 2019-02-25 02:25 am (UTC)If I was more talented, I'd probably make that into an icon.
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